Poll: The high court and health care

The historic Supreme Court hearings on President Barack Obama’s health care reform did not affect most Americans’ views of the law and the court, but they did make more people feel less favorable than favorable about both, a new poll has found.

Almost two in three people, 63 percent, said what they saw and heard about the Supreme Court hearings on the health care law didn’t change their opinion of the measure, according to a Pew Research Center-Washington Post survey. Still, 23 percent said they had a less favorable view of the divisive law after the three-day hearings, compared with 7 percent who said they had a more favorable opinion after last week.

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Republicans were more likely to be negatively swayed about the president’s signature first-term accomplishment than Democrats or independents — 35 percent of GOP-ers said the hearings did more harm than good to their view of the Affordable Care Act, compared with just 13 percent of Democrats and 27 percent of independents that said the same.

Similarly, 65 percent of those surveyed said last week’s hearings didn’t change their views about the Supreme Court, while 21 percent said they were left feeling less positive about the high court and 7 percent said they felt more positive about it.

In this case, a higher percentage of Democrats were negatively affected by the hearings than Republicans or independents. Thirty-two percent of Democrats said they had less favorable opinions of the Supreme Court after last week’s hearings, while 14 percent of Republicans and 16 percent of independents said the same.

The Pew Research Center-Washington Post poll was conducted March 29-April 1 among 1,000 adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.